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World of Sport

11th Dec 2014

No prizes for guessing the most watched sports event of 2014 in Ireland

BOD's epic swansong was the biggest televised sporting event of the year

Kevin McGillicuddy

Does Tubridy soaking people with a water pistol on the Toy Show count as sport?

RTE have released their viewing figures for their 10 most watched programmes in 2014 and it’s a bit surprising that only four sports events made it onto the list.

The biggest match of the year for armchair fans was the final Six Nations game of the season, which was a showdown for the title between Ireland and France on Saturday the March 15.

A huge 878,000 people tuned into Tom, Popey and Hooky for the match on a day when Brian O’Driscoll hung up his boots for the very final time in a green jersey.

That came in at number six on the list, just ahead of the World Cup final between Argentina and Germany with an audience of 858,000

The football decider between Kerry and Donegal sneaks into the list at number 9 at 826,000 on September 21st, while day one of the hurling final also managed to amass an audience of 784,000 to complete the shortlist

Somewhat strangely considering the draw was such a classic, the second All-Ireland hurling final between Kilkenny and Tipperary doesn’t make the list at all.

We should add that Love/Hate took up all the other spots on the list apart from the Toy Show, which swept the boards with 1.357million ‘kidults’ tuning in.